Victor’s hand left my waist the second we stepped through his parents’ front door.
“Don’t,” he muttered under his breath, eyes already scanning the crowded living room for whoever mattered more than me. His palm had rested there for the photographers outside—light, performative, gone the moment the door closed. I felt the absence like a slap. The dress I’d chosen clung to every curve he’d spent the last eight months calling soft, heavy, wrong. Plump. The word still lived under my skin. He’d stopped touching me the week he was sworn in. Said the cameras would notice. Said he needed a wife who looked like the office, not like she’d let herself go. Tonight the dress was emerald, low enough that my breasts threatened the neckline every time I breathed, tight enough across my hips that I had t
